February 17, 2015

New Spotlight on Old Treasures: Cotton to Gold: Extraordinary Collections of the Industrial North West @ Two Temple Place, London

Modern luxury magnates from huge fashion conglomerates currently display their private collections of art pieces in dedicated buildings that have become monumentally tangible symbols of their wealth. But you wonder what will happen in a few decades' time: where will their collections end up and will these buildings still be standing as testaments of their financial power?

An exhibition currently on at Two Temple Place - a neo-Gothic mansion on London's Victoria Embankment originally designed as the London headquarters for the American-born millionaire Lord Astor - may help us making comparisons and future conjectures.

"Cotton to Gold: Extraordinary Collections of the Industrial North West" features indeed several rare pieces collected by a group of Lancashire cotton magnates between 1850 and the First World War.

While the cotton mills boomed bringing development and deprivation hand in hand, these industrialists bought rare and at times eccentric pieces that ended up forming little known collections.

Curated by Dr Cynthia Johnston from the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, and Dr Jack Hartnell from the Courtauld Institute, the event proves that collectors had very different and more personal tastes when it came to buying art pieces and assorted oddities, compared to many modern and equally wealthy collectors.

Organised in collaboration with Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Haworth Art Gallery and Towneley Hall in Burnley, the exhibition features indeed complete sets of Roman coins, cuneiform tablets, medieval manuscripts and early printed books; life drawings by Millais and Turner watercolours; Tiffany glass and Japanese prints; Byzantine icons and ivory sculptures, a selection of stuffed birds and preserved beetles and even a 12th century mummy (behold, visitors: legend says that it is haunted and that bloodshed occurs every time it is moved).

Unearthed from a cave in the Andes (together with its burial accoutrements) by globe trotting electrical engineer William T Taylor during his travels in 1913, this mummy of an Incan nobleman is now displayed next to Taylor's llama fur bound diary (a very early example of luxury stationery...).

As the contents of the exhibition are extremely varied, "Cotton to Gold" looks like a collage made with objects from different times picked by people with a wide range of tastes, it is a sort a cabinet of curiosities that may prove to modern visitors less cold and clinical compared to more famous collections assembled by contemporary industrialists and entrepreneurs.

Yet, though variety is one of the strength of this exhibition, the main point of "Cotton to Gold" is reminding us all that, too often, budget cuts prevent rarely seen pieces from being displayed, and these items end up languishing in forgotten boxes and archives in the institutions that house them. Food for thought not just for visitors who may be missing out on unusual yet beautiful pieces, but for the modern collectors and luxury market entrepreneurs as well, assembling riches and building temples to their own selves while pretending of being philanthropists.

"Cotton to Gold: Extraordinary Collections of the Industrial North West", Two Temple Place, 2 Temple Place, London WC2R 3BD, until 19th April 2015.

Image credits for this post

1. Two robin redbreasts, one mottled, in case with painted background and collageBooth CollectionTowneley Hall Art Gallery and Museum